Still annoyed at BVB jumping ship but good on Konami for getting Schalke in as a partner team ASAP to mitigate the disappointment. Shame on EA and BVB really, doesn't look good on either this whole scenario.

Although the addition of the extra leagues is without doubt a positive, such an addition to a PES game always gets me worried - every year Konami are happy to announce what they have added to the game but never announce what they've lost - notice it was UEFA who announced the end of the Champions League and Europa League licenses, and BVB who announced the termination of the partnership with Dortmund, not Konami. Makes me worry about what other licenses/features they may have lost...

I wouldn't expect anything else from the European side to have gone. Now the Brazilian league is one... The whole thing is just a mess. I wouldn't mind if they ditched it and just had whatever teams/players they have deals with. Chilean League should be safe.
The AFC will have gone as well along with the regular Cl I read? Again, I liked a few of the teams in it but didn't care about the rest personally....

Man, these battles for licensing exclusives get tedious for me. I just think that FIFA and PES fans all lose out to a certain degree. Things would be so much better if any game could feature any league providing they paid for the licence. Would be great if more energy went into making the games as good as possible.

The Dortmund thing is bitter blow for Konami and really disappointing. I guess they aren't the same team they were a few years ago anyway and since we got a taste of them in PES 2018, it doesn't seem as big a deal to me now. Welcome to Schalke I guess, the stadium is a good addition.

I liked the AFC teams being in the game but rarely used them tbh. Personally love the Brazilian League and always use it for a ML. You need to get hold of an OF to sort it out though- it's piss poor how it's such a mix of licensed stuff and loads of players called Bittencourt and shit like that. It's a bit of mixed blessing.

For new league speculation- I'm going to throw the Colombian league in as my hunch

Is that really true about @Mike ? Sorry to hear that. He's a great guy and his hard work on the OFs have been much appreciated. Thought he'd mentioned life away from PES was getting very busy for him.

I'm back again!

First of all, sincere apologies for going AWOL for so long. As it's been suggested, my personal life has changed quite significantly lately, and for various reasons, I haven't been able to put as much time into the site compared to previous years.

OPE has been such a huge part of my life for such a long time, I wanted to find the right words as well as waiting for the right moment to make an announcement. But, rather than putting that off again and again, and making everyone wait even longer, I'll now use this post to try and explain everything to you guys.

Basically, for more than two months now, I've been working full-time at Konami as part of the PES Data Team. Obviously, I was absolutely honoured to be given such an opportunity and I'm really enjoying the new role so far.

Also in April, I moved out of my dad's house and - for the first time in my life - I'm now living on my own. As you can imagine, the last few months or so have been pretty life-changing - in some bad ways but mostly good - hence why I've been so quiet on here, the main site, as well as Facebook and Twitter. For that, I am genuinely sorry; you guys deserved better. However, I hope you can all appreciate and understand my situation.

As for the future, I want to keep the site alive.The domain is set to run until September so we have plenty of time to work something out. Rather than completely shutting down the site, I'd at least like to keep the forums going. For me, closing everything down and leaving people stranded (if that's the right word) would be very unfair, especially given how much time everyone has put into the site; creating a community, building relationships, making friends, and everything in-between.

Of course, if you guys have any comments or questions, please feel free to send them my way and I'll do my best to answer them.

To finish, I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me since the site's inception way back in September 2010. Without you guys, none of this would have been possible. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much.

Well done on getting such a good job with Konami! An excellent opportunity for you but honestly think it's great for PES to have you involved. You're just the sort of guy who should be working behind the scenes making sure that the data is good. Funnily enough I had a hunch you might be doing something like that. Would be interested to know more about what you are doing specifically- but know you have to be discreet.

I haven't been around much and haven't played much PES 2018, despite it being extremely good! Peppa Pig has kinda took over the TV Managed to play a bit of ML over the last few weeks and loving it.